The church in America has a serious problem, and it’s getting worse.
Many pastors of our mega-churches are refusing to take a solid stance on some major moral issues of our time. Everyone takes a stand against human trafficking and other heinous things like that, and that’s a good thing, for sure. But when it comes to issues like premarital sexual relations or homosexual behavior or gay marriage, many pastors take the position of “wrestling” with it, wanting to appear loving and not judgmental.
Our culture has certainly drifted to the place where sexual morality is often not seen as an issue. To take a stand would, of course, be met with immediate resistance, and, after all, who wants to be written off as behind the times, irrelevant, homophobic, unloving, intolerant, etc, etc. Pastors also do not want to alienate a whole generation of youth and young adults from being open to the Gospel. So in order to avoid the resistance and to avoid being written off as unloving or irrelevant or worse, there is a non-stance position taken on these issues. One mega-church pastor said, “We take a stance on love; we have conversation on everything else.” That is definitely a way to avoid being labeled unloving, etc.
But here’s the problem with that. The non-stance of Christian leaders on these matters has created an absence of truth on sexual moral issues. The vacuum created by this non-stance is being filled by those who are twisting the Scriptures to justify both heterosexual and homosexual sins. Since many mega-church pastors are not dealing straightforwardly with these issues, nether preaching nor teaching from the major biblical texts that deal with them, the church itself, over time, is drifting away from God’s clear Word and will. If this doesn’t change soon, the problem won’t be “will we lose a generation?” or “will we lose the lost?”, but it will be, “have we lost the HOLY SPIRIT?”
Christian leaders must take a stand!!! Yes, we must speak in love, but we must speak the TRUTH in love. If we do not, the culture will continue to sink toward depravity of all kinds, and as God’s watchmen and watch-women, we will be held accountable.